Richard Wilkinson among social experts analysing Cameron's speech

Submitted 12 November 2009

David Cameron's speech on poverty, the state and the mass engagement of a new generation of community activists on Tuesday set the direction of travel under a Conservative government.

In the Guardian today a panel of social experts analyse the Tory leader's key points.

Prof Richard Wilkinson, Director of The Equality Trust was among the experts. The following is taken from the Guardian report:

The fairest societies are the happiest. The gap between the bottom and those in the middle must be narrowed.

Cameron: "Research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in The Spirit Level, has shown that among the richest countries, it's the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator ... We should focus on closing the gap between the bottom and the middle ... because focusing on those who do not have the chance of a good life is the most important thing to do."

Richard Wilkinson, emeritus professor of public health, Nottingham University (quoted with approval by Cameron): "Bringing down the top incomes is very important. Cameron talks about social problems and diminishing responsibility as if they came from too much government. I think these are the long-term consequences of the rise of inequalities under Thatcher.

I imagine income distribution in society as if we were all at different points on a piece of elastic. If you pull out the top further, then everyone below gets spread out further apart.

Government expenditure and its endless initiatives haven't had much impact ... but if Brown's budgets hadn't been redistributive then things would be worse than they are now. The present government didn't realise how important inequality was."